From Cuilly or Quilly, near Falaise, in Normandy, which formed part of the possessions of the Burdetts. “Robert Bordet, Lord of Cuily, came to England with the Conqueror, but was dead before 1086, when his widow held from Hugh de Grentemesnil in Lincolnshire (Dom. i. 232 b.) His son, Hugh, had issue: 1. Robert de Cuilly; and 2. Walter de Cuilly. The elder son, Sire de Cuilly, married Sibylla, daughter of William de Chievre, a baron of Devon; and on undertaking to rebuild the city of Tarragona in Spain, and to defend it against the Saracens, obtained the suzerainty, with the title of Prince of Tarragona. He, in 1133, at the head of his Norman chivalry, rescued Alfonso King of Arragon and his army from destruction by the Saracens at the battle of Fraga. William, Sire d’Aguillon, his son, one of the barons in Normandy 1165 (Feod. Norm.), lost the principality of Tarragona in consequence of the accidental death of the Archbishop, which was attributed to him. He appears to have been succeeded by Manasser d’Aguillon, his brother, ancestor of the De Cuillys of Normandy. Walter de Cuilly, brother of the first Prince of Tarragona, witnessed the foundation charter of Canwell, Stafford, 1142 (Mon. i. 440). In 1247 Hugh de Cuilly paid a fine in Warwick (Roberts, Excerpt ii). William de Quilly (13th c.) held lands in Stafford from Marmion, and also held Ratcliff-Culey, Leicester, from the same. Hugh de Culey was Lord of Ratcliffe 1296-99. In 1309, he was Constable of Kenilworth; and being taken prisoner with the Earl of Lancaster at the battle of Boroughbridge, died of his wounds in Pontefract Castle. He had issue John Culey, who had two sons: 1. Thomas, whose daughter and heir married Sir John Stanhope of Rampton; and 2, Richard, living 1361 (Rot. Origin. ii. 351), who was father of John Cully of Lubbenham, Leicester, who married a daughter of Sir John Harrington (Harl. MS. 1558, fol. 35), and had issue John of Lubbenham, father of William Colley of Glaston, Rutland, whose son John had issue: 1. Anthony, ancestor of the Colleys, Lords of Glaston, extinct; 2. Walter; 3. Robert. The two younger sons went to Ireland temp. Henry VIII.; and from Walter descended the Lords of Castle-Carbery, the lineal male ancestors of Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, the greatest and most victorious general ever produced by England.”—The Norman People. The “Honfroi de Culai” entered on the Dives Roll as the companion of the Conqueror, and a sub-tenant in Domesday, does not appear in this pedigree. The Cuilys continued at Ratcliffe Cuily from the reign of Henry II. to that of Richard II. Their coat of arms—Sable, a chevron between three mullets Argent pierced of the field— is still blazoned in one of the north windows of the church chancel; and in another opposite is the effigy of a man in armour, kneeling, and bearing on his arms an escutcheon Cuily, which is repeated on his surcoat. Another similar figure bears the coat differenced.

Both Nichols and Dugdale give the descents of this family somewhat differently from the above. Sir Hugh de Cuily, the Constable of Kenilworth under Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, who, according to Dugdale, “was one of those who had a hand in the murder of Piers de Gaveston,” held the manor of Dunton in Warwickshire. “It seems that he made his residence there in these times, for in 8 Ed. II. he served as a knight for this shire in the several parliaments then held at Westminster and York; and was a knight before his d.eath, which hapned at Pomfret Castle in 16 Ed. II. To which Hugh succeeded Roger, who, adhering to his Father in that Rebellion with the Earl of Lancaster, became also a Prisoner at Pomfret, but paying C marks fine and giving security for future good behaviour, he was enlarged.” Thomas, the last heir, was Roger’s son, and had two younger brothers, Sir John and Hugh (there is no mention of Richard in Nichol's Leicestershire), who married two Irish co-heiresses, the daughters of Oliver de Mandeville. Thomas and Hugh had each a son, and Sir John had two, but all of them died s.p., and the daughter of the eldest brother, Elizabeth de Cuily, remained sole heiress. She was the wife of Sir John Stanhope of Rampton in Nottinghamshire; and Sir Richard Stanhope sold Dunton in 1422. One of their Warwickshire manors is called Merston Culey to this day.

The Caileys, Cayles, or Cuileys, Barons of Buckenham in Norfolk, who ended with Thomas de Caily (the son of Sir Osbert and the co-heiress of Tateshall) in 1316, appear to have been a distinct family, or at all events bore totally different arms, that is, Chequy Gules and Or, a bend Ermine. I am inclined to believe that it was to them Honfroi de Culai belonged, though Blomfield derives them from “Osmund, who was enfeoffed of Denver by Earl Warren.”